Thomas Hobbes and John Locke

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke were English social contract theorists who produced books approximately 100 years before the American Revolution describing why men enter political society and what shape the resulting state ought to take. Because of their insistence that the state ought to be justified (or else dissolved) according to whether it satisfied the principles for which it had originally been established, they were highly influential among the founding fathers in America, who made appeal to the writings of Hobbes and Locke to argue that the English sovereign had crossed the lines limiting its authority in the colonies, thereby justifying their overthrowing of that sovereign in the colonies. They also weighed seriously the writing of the two theorists as they developed the American constitution, so that they could be sure to develop for themselves a government that would be justified according to principles that would be good for the body politic that would live under the constitution.

Both Hobbes and Locke imagined a situation in which man lived in a state of nature before he entered the body politic. Hobbes thought that men were basically ill-tempered and untrustworthy and therefore agreed to give over their rights to a sovereign that would rule them absolutely for their own benefit. He favored a large and powerful government able to enforce its will on subjects, in order to control their natural unruliness. Locke, on the other hand thought men in the state of nature were good, but that due to their need to be secure in their property and to protect themselves from outside forces, they banded together to form a state to benefit themselves individually. He favored a limited government able to protect its citizens which would act otherwise almost entirely on their behalf.